Dr Wayne Kublalsingh said yesterday that he was prepared to suspend his protest action and end his hunger strike if the Government was serious about mediation in the dispute over the Debe to Mon Desir segment of the Solomon Hochoy Highway extension to Point Fortin. This has been his first sign of calling off the hunger strike which began 54 days ago.
Speaking during a telephone interview, Kublalsingh, the leader of the Highway Re-route Movement (HRM), revealed that Trade and Communications Minister Vasant Bharath had visited his home last week and he had made the proposal and was now awaiting feedback. “The only thing that can work at the moment is the process of mediation,” he said, as the HRM was prepared to “stop work for seven days while mediation continues and the hunger strike will be suspended.”
He said for mediation to work there must be someone mutually acceptable and independent to negotiate between the HRM and government representatives. Chief among the issues to be determined, he said, was for the mediation team to examine the Armstrong Report, the alternative route suggested by the HRM, and the Government’s plan for the Debe to Mon Desir segment of the highway.
“If the Government accepts the Armstrong process or the Optimum Connectivity Plan with practical modifications if necessary and any other plan that is economic and practical, the hunger strike will come to an end,” Kublalsingh said.
Offer for COP help rejected
Political leader of the Congress of the People (COP) Prakash Ramadhar yesterday announced that he was willing to set up a team to meet with the HRM leader Dr Wayne Kublalsingh to discuss the current impasse and bring an end to the 54-day hunger strike. But in an immediate response Kublalsingh rejected the offer. “I think the COP is out of place to call on us to end the hunger strike as a pre-condition. That is arrant nonsense,” he said.
During an emergency press conference at its Flagship House on Tragarete Road, Woodbrook, yesterday, Ramadhar announced the COP had convened a conflict resolution team to meet with Kublalsingh. Stressing that the invitation was not an attempt at mediation, Ramadhar said the members of the team would be announced if Kublalsingh agreed to the meeting, and would include relevant stakeholders.
He said they intended to invite Minister of Works Dr Suruj Rambachan, as well as management officials of the National Insurance Development Company (Nidco), project managers of the highway, to sit in. He said the meeting would be conditional and hinged on Kublalsingh’s agreement to end the hunger strike. Ramadhar said the invitation had been extended in response to the views of COP’s members and the public, who were clamouring for a humanitarian intervention to save Kublalsingh’s life.
In a statement on the weekend, members of the party’s Diego Martin constituency appealed to Ramadhar to intervene in the matter and save Kublalsingh whom they described as a “patriot and someone whom this country cannot afford to lose.”